Until We Do Not

Love and pain collaborate to make 
willingness to care, the integument
caring wears in the zone of fearful hurt –
love armors us as kindred of the wound

I step away to step toward those
I succor in the peril of their lives
I do not do this easily, because terror
of abandonment lives in me as well

this is poetry of the prosaic
for there is no glamor in…